SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the premiere episode of HBO Max’s Stuart Fails To Save the Universe.
The Big Bang Theory spinoff Stuart Fails To Save the Universe starts off with Stuart (Kevin Sussman) in a post-apocalyptic Pasadena getting a visit from an alternate version of himself who urges him to restore reality after he had broken a quantum interference device built by Sheldon and Leonard, accidentally bringing about a multiverse Armageddon. The mission begins with a quest to break into CalTech to retrieve the machine. On the way there, Stuart and Bert (Brian Posehn) bump into Stuart’s old flame Denise (Lauren Lapkus) — now a common thief — and her boyfriend Gary (Tommy Walker) who decide to help them.
Gary is swiftly (and meaninglessly) killed per the spoiler in the title sequence — read all about that and the show’s unusual opening credits here — but there was a bigger death waiting inside.
Stuart, Bert and Denise are captured and imprisoned alongside Raj (original Big Bang star Kunal Nayyar) who had been locked up there for years under the orders of “the evil one,” the Great Khalif of South Pasadena, who turns out to be none other than Big Bang‘s Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie).
After some action hero heroics, Stuart, Bert, Denise and Raj get to the device and Raj is seconds from fixing it when he is shot dead in the back by Kripke, determined to protect his reign.
Deadline asked Stuart Fails to Save the Universe creators Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady and Zak Penn about the shocking development involving a legacy Big Bang character.
“Well, he’s only gone in this one universe, as Kripke points out in the next universe,” Lorre and Prady said.
Added Penn, “We liked the idea, I think we all thought it would be fun to do because we knew that we could bring them back,” he said of Raj and other OG Big Bang characters. “But I think it’ll be fun for people watching the first episode, don’t you? That there’ll be this moment of like, oh my God, they killed Raj!”
During Stuart Fails To Save the Universe‘s Thursday Comic-Com panel that followed a screening of the premiere, Prady teased more Big Bang returns.
“You saw one wonderful member of the the Big Bang Theory family in that first episode,” he said. “There are more, and there are also some performers who are some wonderful minor characters that are coming back.”
Speaking to Deadline, Bowie addressed the evil turn Kripke takes in the premiere, capped by the coldblooded murder of Raj.
“I would be very curious as to how America reacts to that, I gotta say,” he said. “It moves the plot forward, and in the very next episode, he makes the point that maybe that universe doesn’t exist anymore, in which case, I did not kill Raj, or I killed one of an infinite number of Rajes, so it is after all a ‘wounding ewwow’ — which is harder to say than it sounds.”
As you can see in the video of his comments below, Bowie slipped into character, saying “rounding error” with Kripke’s signature rhotacism speech pattern.
“So they kind of rationalize it, but that said, Kunal is the sweetest, he is made of puppies, basically, and to have to shoot him in the back, no less, didn’t feel great, I won’t lie to you,” Boiwe added. “But then immediately, what happens? Burt kicks my ass in the most extended fight scene either of us has ever done. Burt hands me my ass immediately following — which was apparently Zak Penn’s idea — like, if he’s going to do this, he has to immediately have his comeuppance.”
Bowie got a lot of flak from fans — and his co-stars –for what his character did to Raj during the Stuart Fails To Save the Universe‘s Comic-Com panel.
“He’s the most likable character maybe in TV history, it’s like it’s like shooting Fonzie, I feel terrible,” Bowie said before reassuring the audience, “I only do it once. Sorry, I will spoil that.”
Later, Bowie was teased again, this time by Posehn, over the killing.
“You saw that Raj comes back, right?,” Bowie asked the audience. “I really wanted them to show that Raj comes back, or else I wasn’t going to come out here. Why couldn’t I have just shot Howard?”
That last line — referencing one of Big Bang‘s main characters, Kripke’s engineering rival Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) — got a big laugh.
As Penn explained to Deadline, Kripke was added to Stuart Fails To Save the Universe by Prady to serve as an antagonist in the mold of Dr. Zachary Smith from Lost In Space.
“Obviously, as sort of the in-house villain of the show — much as he was on on the last program — but the necessity of the this group is that he eventually has to learn how to work with other people,” Bowie said at Comic-Con. “So he’s actually got kind of a cool arc over the course of the 10 episodes. He’s Kripke, don’t get me wrong, you’re going to hear some awful stuff from Kripke’s mouth. But he has a little bit of an arc, and it’s fun to to take him on that journey.”
Indeed, while the character went very dark in the premiere, there is always a path to redemption. As Kripke says in a subsequent episode, “Being an asshole is a hobby, not a vocation” in one of the season’s more memorable lines.
“I love that line too,” Bowie told Deadline. “That was really fun to say, it was a really fun moment for me too.”
While he appears sympathetic to Kripke, at Comic-Con, the cast were asked what is one thing about their characters they would change.
“I would love for Kripke to be just a little taller,” Bowie, 5’8″, quipped.
